Cooking inherently generates fumes and particulates that can dirty the interior of the oven and/or foul the exhaust gasses leaving the oven. To address these issues, some ovens have employed catalytic converters, or other such cleansing technologies.
A catalytic converter generally uses a catalyst to facilitate a chemical reaction to convert toxic gases or pollutants in the exhaust gas into less harmful states by catalyzing a redox reaction. In particular, the catalytic converter is typically placed in communication with the gases in or leaving the oven to treat the gases. In some cases, a separate flow path may be created for cycling at least some of the air that generally flows through the convection system of the oven through the catalytic converter. If the flow path draws air directly from or inserts air directly into the cooking chamber, direct impacts on the temperature in the oven can be noticed, and the uniformity of the oven's cooking ability may be disrupted. Meanwhile, if other strategies for drawing and cleaning air are employed, other disruptive impacts on system efficiency or cooking uniformity may be noticed.
The catalytic converter itself uses high temperatures to burn toxic gases or pollutants. Conventional catalytic converters have attempted to improve catalytic converter efficiency, in some cases, by preheating the gas provided on the inlet line to the catalytic converter itself. Others have cooled catalytic converter output gases in the outlet line from the catalytic converter. However, the impacts of the airflow for the catalytic converter within the oven cavity itself has generally not been a significant focus area for technological improvement. Accordingly, some example embodiments may be provided to address this area.